This morning, Tea Party Nation sent out an email to its members with the headline “Destroy the Family, You Destroy the Country!” from an article by Dr. Rich Swier, a contributing editor to the anti-Muslim group Family Security Matters. Writing for Tea [Party] Nation, Swier says that “The title of this column is a direct quote from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the first leader of the former Soviet Union. Lenin's vision was for the state (Communism) to replace the family as the provider of all things necessary for life and happiness. What Lenin did not foresee was his political policies leading to the eventual extinction of Russian civilization.” Swier goes on to lament the falling birthrate of native-born Americans compared to immigrants, and warns that “American culture” will soon perish since the “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) population is headed for extinction

Mike Huckabee tells the audience at the Rediscover God in America conference that America is in a battle of good against evil and needs "spiritual warriors" who will not allow the nation to fall "to the hands of those who would enslave us." God created the United States and only God can destroy it, and so it is up to pastors to mobilize their congregations to stand for righteousness, even if it is unpopular ... like Iowans did in removing three judges from the state Supreme Court for recognizing marriage equality

Mike Huckabee is not representative of the majority of Americans. In what must be for former governor Mike Huckabee a hair-raising development, a recent Washington Post-ABC poll found that more than 50% of Americans favor gay marriage.

In so far as American conservatism can be defined as a "law and order" philosophy and gay marriage can be seen as the expansion of an inherently conservative, institutionalized lifestyle, gay marriage can easily be considered a conservative concept. Who denies that in most cases marriage settles people down, encourages cohabitation, domesticates them, increases the chances of monogamy between the couple, integrates them more fully into the local community, probably turns their thoughts towards property (and taxes), tamps down excessive individualism, and turns the thought of each partner towards towards the other? Guess what? Same-sex marriage does the same thing. To that extent at least, marriage is marriage...and the republic's law ought to reflect that. In the pre-Reagan era, gay rights was often associated with sexual license, while in the post-Reagan era it's associated with marriage and, frankly, love and commitment. This is not the result of AIDS somehow making sexual conservatives out of gay Americans; it is a shift that reflects an entire generational shift among both straight and gay 20somethings and teens (for whom it might be added AIDS is mostly something that happens faraway in Africa) toward pragmatic progressivism relative to a whole host of issues. This in part explains their admiration for candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

If these realities are not lost on Huckabee, they nonetheless do not impress him.

Ron Miller is the president of the Tea Party group Regular Folks United, and a former Republican candidate for Congress and the Maryland state senate. Miller, who is a black former staffer with the Bush Administration, adamantly defends Tea Party activists from charges of racism, blaming Obama for his “open display of condescension toward ordinary Americans.” But while Miller deplores charges of racism against members of the Tea Party, he claims that African Americans only support Obama because he is black. He told the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow that anyone who backs Obama cannot be Christian, and black Obama voters “place their blackness ahead of Christ”

Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) who is considering running for president, recently visited Boston, a major hub of Catholic politics and the biggest media market in New England. While minor appearances by non-candidates don't always make the news, Santorum's remarks to a small group of Church partisans made The Boston Globe because he not only denounced our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy in his home town, but he attacked Kennedy's historic 1960 campaign speech in which he explained his unwavering clarity regarding the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state. Kennedy's position had served as the standard for a half century of political leaders. (See Rob Boston's excellent defense of Kennedy's views on separation.)

Santorum has been trying to rebuild his political career since being unseated by Bob Casey (D-PA) in 2006. And while he may not catch fire on the campaign trail, Santorum's bombast in Boston is certainly part of an escalating war of attrition against the principle of separation -- and it may be a bellwether for what we might anticipate in the run-up to the 2012 presidential campaign.

Chuck Pierce and Cindy Jacobs jointly warned that California would be destroyed by a massive earthquake if Proposition 8 were to be struck down.

Well, California residents had better take that to heart because today Pierce reminds us that back in 2005 he and his associates prophesied that Japan would be shaken and brought to its knees because it was a "stronghold of spiritism"

Religious Right Watch hereby predicts that places near fault lines will have earthquakes and be shaken and brought to their knees because . . . they're near fault lines.

So, did Pearl Harbor succeed because God was punishing the US for Tennessee's legal victory against John Thomas Scopes? Or perhaps because only 3 days before (gasp! what a Biblical number, too!) the State of Jefferson was declared (N. Cal. & S. Oregon) with judge John Childs as a governor. That was probably it. If this republic would ever name a state after a deist, surely God would smite us via our enemies or, maybe, the Yellowstone Supervolcano.

The hearing on Islamic radicalization staged by Rep. Peter King is an appalling example of the media being sucker-punched.

Where in the recent news coverage were interviews with social scientists who actually study how religious ideology can intersect with violence and terrorism? Let's start with some basics.

People do not become religious fundamentalists because they have been "brainwashed," coerced, or are mentally unstable. They become involved in social movement mobilization and recruitment built around themes of religious obligation.

Most religious fundamentalists are not violent.

There is no direct causal relationship linking religious fundamentalism and violence.

it is worth considering the latest escalation of eliminationist rhetoric by Rush Limbaugh. What he said is not the worst I have heard about on rightwing talk radio, or from Religious Right figures. But his audience is huge and what he said may be a bellwether.

John Stemberger is the President of the Florida Family Policy Council who has recently become a cause célèbre for the Religious Right because he is facing both a $10 million defamation lawsuit and misconduct complaint stemming from his actions during the Rifqa Bary saga in 2009.